me?”
Lena held up her hands and backed up a step. “Why did you leave it unattended?”
“Do you see a bathroom around here?” He scowled at her. “I have an inventory of everything here. I’ll report you.”
“Sorry, my mistake.” She backed away and found Solan. “False alarm. The vendor went to the bathroom. The only thing that looked like a bomb was his lunchbox.”
Her partner’s shoulders sank, and he nodded in defeat. “Let’s head back. Maybe the others have had more luck.” They walked slowly, still on the lookout for anything suspicious. But it was just a normal day in the city. A normal day with danger sizzling hot in the air.
“Is there going to be an evacuation order?” she asked quietly. She didn’t know the protocol; that was another thing she needed to learn.
“Not until we have a more specific area. If they try and evacuate the entire city center all of the streets will get clogged with traffic and the citizens will be more vulnerable to attack. As bad as it sounds, it may be the difference between a hundred deaths and a thousand.” He didn’t sound happy about it. Of course he wasn’t. He was a caring person, just as protective as she was. Neither of them wanted to lose anyone. But she understood what he was saying.
“We’ll stop it.” Lena would do whatever it took to keep her new home safe.
They made it back to the rendezvous point where Crowze and Grace were waiting.
“Nothing?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Crowze confirmed.
Lena put her head in her hands. This was bad. Two sections down with nothing suspicious. Would Ax and Jori or Emily and Oz come back empty-handed as well? She feared they would. Lena looked up, as if the sky could give her an answer. And it did.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of one of the spires that pierced the air around the palace. If a person was going to plant a bomb and wanted to do the most damage, taking out citizens wouldn’t be the goal.
“The queen,” she said, horror dawning. “They want to take out the queen.”
THE FOUR OF THEM RAN for the palace. Solan was a few steps behind, since he had taken a moment to relay her suspicion to his commander. They didn’t have time to wait for an order to move. If there was a bomb in the palace, the queen was in danger and they needed to save her.
The guards at the gate waved them through and Solan could hear the alarm going up, the word spreading that there was danger. In the past they might’ve found the queen holding court in the great hall, but she had been injured in an attack several months before and was confined to the residential wing of the palace. Could the Apsyns get a bomb there?
“Do we get her out of the palace?” asked Grace.
“Don’t be foolish, that only makes her more vulnerable,” Crowze pointed out, his tone unnecessarily harsh.
Grace glared at him, then turned to Solan. “What’s our next move?”
Solan took a minute to think. Rushing was just as likely to get them all killed as moving too slowly. “There’s no point in hitting the palace if they can’t hit the queen. If there is a bomb, it will be near her quarters.”
“Wait,” Lena said, holding up a hand. “They could also be trying to cause chaos. If they couldn’t get a bomb into her quarters, they could still set one off and use the confusion to kill or abduct her. We need eyes on the queen. And the guards need to be ready in case we’ve got more Apsyns coming.”
His Match had a point. “The master of her guard will be with her. Let’s go.”
They were waved through to the queen’s quarters. Solan would have reprimanded the guards if they were his men. It didn’t matter that he had a noble name or that they were all serving the Synnr military.
The queen’s quarters were big, multiple rooms where she could meet with her advisors while relaxing in style. But it wasn’t an advisor sitting beside her now. It was Zac, one of the humans who had been rescued along with Lena, Emily, and the others.
He sprung to his feet when they ran in. “What are you doing here?” But he looked between Grace and Crowze as he asked, completely ignoring Solan and Lena. Interesting.
“What are you doing here?” Grace shot back.
Crowze was silent, but he looked between Zac and the